Animal feeders, including wildlife feeders, are known in the prior art to dispense feed to domestic animals, such as cattle, or wildlife, such as deer.
These prior art animal feeders are typically either passive or active. A passive feeder is one that does not use a motor. An active feeder uses a motor to cast feed from a hopper onto the ground. Active wildlife feeders usually include a control unit having a timer and are battery powered, the battery driving the electric motor. The timer is set to dispense the feed at regular intervals. The wildlife learn these intervals and will tend to aggregate at the wildlife feeder at those times. For example, the wildlife may be trained by a feeder activated about sunset to aggregate at the feeder area about sunset.
In a passive wildlife feeder, the feed is fed from a hopper into a feed trough and the geometry of the feeder is such that the feed lays adjacent a trough opening. An animal will eat the food from the mouth of the food trough. As the food is eaten, gravity feed will allow more to enter the feed trough. Such a feed mechanism is entirely passive, depending as it does on the impetus of gravity to allow the granular feed to continue to move into the feed trough as the animal eats from the end of the trough.
Moreover prior art animal feeders are typically designed to accept a single type of food, for example, either corn or protein, for dispensing either actively or passively. Prior art animal feeders are designed to supply feed, from a single hopper, to one or more troughs (passive) or from a single hopper onto a disk for active dispensing therefrom. If a user requires two different food substances to be provided in the same area, two separate animal feeders are typically required or one has to be used up and then a second different supply of feed provided therein.